Chelsea crushes the competition

Issue 406 of the CIES Football Observatory’s Weekly Post presents the 50 clubs that spent the most on the player market during the current and last summer’s transfer windows.

Chelsea crushes the competition with €555 million invested (including add-ons) to acquire 15 footballers.

This is more than double the amount spent by the second biggest spender: Manchester United (€272 million for 7 players).

West Ham United, Nottingham Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers complete an all-English top five.

All twenty Premier League teams but Leicester City (51st), feature in the top 50, reflecting the increasingly obvious economic dominance of the English top flight.

Barcelona is ahead of Paris St-Germain among non-Premier League teams, AFC Ajax tops the table for clubs outside of the big-5, while Flamengo is the only non-European team in the top 50.

Per league, the English top division is far above any other championship with a staggering €3.19 billion total fee expenditure (add-ons included).

This is almost four times more than the amount invested by the teams in the second biggest spending league: the Italian Serie A (€826 m).

The French Ligue 1 (€726 m) completes the podium ahead of the Spanish Liga (€708 m) and the German Bundesliga (€689 m).

The sixth ranked competition, the Dutch Eredivisie, is at a much lower level (€228 m).

>>> Top 50

About the CIES Football Observatory

The CIES Football Observatory is a research group created in 2005 within the Swiss-based Centre International d’Étude du Sport (CIES). It specialises in the statistical analysis of football, in particular in the areas of demographics, transfer values and performance. Click here for more information.

About the CIES

The International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) is an independent study centre located in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. It was created in 1995 as a joint venture between the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the University of Neuchâtel, the City and State of Neuchatel. Click here for more information. Click here for more information.

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